Comment Policy, Social Guidelines

Every season has its books. Winter seems to have come early in the Northeast this year, which means curling up with a good book. I love learning through reading. Reading is the most intimate conversation we have with an author. So in this sense, books are the highest form of personal media.

This reading list is based on personal interest, not pitches from publicists. It includes a variety of works with upcoming release dates, and also some older and worthy titles. The books we haven't read yet represent untapped potential.

All progress begins with an idea someone expressed, others discussed, some acted on and more built upon. I'm grateful for the ideas (and work) the following authors have put forward for us to discuss, act on and build upon with our own ideas and work.

In no particular order, some of these books I mentioned in Learning Habit, our community of thinkers and doers, others are in my antilibrary:

We talk a lot about transformation and not enough about transition. Transition is part of life, says William Bridges. Think of the change of seasons, for those of us who live in places that have them. This book deals with the complex inner psychology of periods of change in our lives. The most valuable aspect of the book is that it can help have a conversation with your feelings. Transitions take a longer time than change, which is more like a trigger. Becoming more aware of the process can help us support those around us who are dealing with change.

Out January 2019. Can you tell a fake? Drawing upon principles from psychology, real-world business experiences and with a peek into some of the technology advances taking place in innovation hotspots like Silicon Valley, this book explores how we get through this muddled state and what we all need to do to succeed in tomorrow’s world.

I'm a huge fan of understanding culture. If you've ever wondered why some cultural groups are so lax while others are so stringent or why working-class parents often tend to be stricter than middle-class parents, this book holds the answers. It provides a useful framework to interpret world events and human behavior.

Have you ever wondered why sometimes when you go to an event, you don't feel welcome or it doesn't feel worth our time? I have. The book focuses mostly on business, but the advice is useful for any kinds of gatherings and events. Getting into the holiday season, we're probably doing a bit of both — attending and hosting.

The title sounds gimmicky, the focus is on the science of networks and how success is the product of collective work. Barabási puts some meat behind the statement, “Your success isn't about you and your performance. It's about us and how we perceive your performance.”

In a world were technology is taking over so many jobs, including the more sophisticated like automated anesthesiology, our roles will shift. The skills of deep human interaction are still needed and even more valuable. This is the main theme of the book. While technology continues to eliminate some jobs, it creates the need for new ones. It's been happening since the dawn of time. We're moving from the Information Age to a new Relationship Age. The value is relationship-building, collaboration with others, brainstorming and leading. To remain relevant, we need to master these uniquely human abilities.

Out February 2019. Anyone can create positive change in their organizations, regardless of where you sit in the org chart. This book is a practical guide on how to create meaningful change in all organization types. It includes case studies on new ways of working and tools to make it happen.

This book exposes the cultural gap between what we say and what we do. We keep saying we cheer for the team, but we end up praising and enriching the individual for accomplishments. People put tasks and achievements ahead of relationships, without a second thought to the damage to colleagues or families. Curiosity and questions are good in theory, yet we keep elevating people who appear to / have the answers. Our culture hails “tellers” not questioners.

We all tend to default to what we should do instead of asking what we could do. The rules say one things... but things change fast, and staying open to trade-offs may lead to better solutions. We also tend to shy away from conflict ― including internal conflict. Yet tension introduces constraints that could help us become more creative. Francesca Gino includes references to Osteria Francescana in Modena. But that wasn't the reason why I got curious about it. The message about breaking the rules did. Do you want to follow a script—or write your own story?

Learning is not a theoretical exercise, it's a practical one. Bradley R. Staats is a behavioral scientist and operations expert and he's spent fourteen years figuring out the principles of dynamic learning. Operations is about improving outcomes. Which means you look at processes ― how inputs convert into outputs ― to make them better. To deconstruct processes you want to figure out the parts, but also how they fit together. Behavioral sciences explains how the fundamental properties of human nature affect a person's ability to learn. Combine the two and you have three steps ― what you need to do to become a dynamic learner, why you don't do those things, and the steps to take to overcome the challenge.

Something to watch about the work of Fred Rogers. For when you're in need of inspiration... and even a good cry. A business example of humanity. To avoid cuts that might have ended public television early on, Mister Rogers went to Washington to testify before the Senate Appropriations Committee, headed by Rhode Island Senator John O. Pastore. The senator has been described as “cynical, caustic, and outrageously sarcastic.”

Rogers’ widow Joanne in an interview reveals the nervousness and fear her husband felt that day. But the footage shows a firm and carefully deferential demeanor, a quietly modulated voice resembling the tones and cadence Rogers used to communicate with preschoolers. In contrast to the Senator's tone, Rogers recites the lyrics to a song he composed for an episode of his show, highlighting the importance of people helping others. It's a six-minute presentation. Senator Pastore looks down at his hands and says, “Well, it looks like you’ve just earned $20 million.”

Personal is the best form of personalization and is stronger than a faceless company brand today. Connection is a result of interactions that over time leads to trust and often love of the kind you cannot bribe.

We respond to knowing whose hands or thinking have made something. Influencer marketing is hot because it's about human impressions. Friends and people we trust are our closest influencers. Facebook's organic reach continues to decline.

While many mainstream brands distributed through retailers are declining, many direct to consumer products are connecting with people. Publishing on your own domain is still the best way to build relationships with your customers.

My web hosting company is offering a sweet deal this week — up to 75% off on new shared hosting plans and upgrades. I switched to SiteGround two years ago and have not looked back.

If you're in the market for a fast, affordable WordPress hosting company, take a look at SiteGround. If you sign up, I get a small referral fee. I don't recommend many things, and I waited two years to have enough experience with three different domains on this service to tell you.

So if you're going to be a publisher in 2019, I cannot think of a better way to start than with a low risk commitment to a hosting company that makes it easy. Get your account now until end of day on Cyber Monday to take advantage of the 75% off special.

We manage to ignore all the noise, including much potentially useful information and data on the facts, yet we pay attention to stories and snippets that trigger our dramatic instincts. That's because we get an emotional high from them.

Our filter has ten holes in it. Hans Rosling named them in Factfulness. Fear is the most used among them — the others are gap, negativity, straight line, size, generalization, destiny, single perspective, blame, and urgency. Fear is hard-wired into our brain, we fear missing out (FOMO) and we have a strong fear of failure, making a mistake.

We should learn to distinguish something that is “frightening” from something that is “dangerous”. One is perceived, the other is real risk.

Why trends are useful

Trends help us create a framework around variables we track over the long term. In Megatrends, John Nasbitt says that each new technology, to be successful, must be coupled with a compensatory human response. Thirty years later, we can tell the trends because they endured in our culture.

The three main categories of fear: are fear of physical harm, fear of captivity — as in loss of control or loss of freedom — and fear of contamination. They distort our worldview and lead to horror of things we don't fully understand or deal with in every day life, like infection and poison.

When stories combine two fears, like that of a plane crash and kidnapping — tapping into fear of harm and captivity — we're pulled in. Then we get programmed by hearing it over and over again seemingly everywhere. This is a distraction that keeps us from learning the deeper data behind the story and taking action, if appropriate.

Yet the predictive story points to a larger trend that is cause for optimism. That is the story we want to let in our attention filter.

Mimicry and unknown unknowns

The majority of the stories we get in the media are the local and familiar kind. They merge facts with anecdotes to share things that are of potential human interest, that connect with belief. They trigger us by appealing to our dramatic instincts.

Sensational headlines draw attention, but distort reality and keep us setting apart what we know from what we don't know. Multiply by the avalanche of similar articles chasing attention, which include many containing false data, and pretty soon it becomes hard to tell a mimic from the real thing.

Batesian Mimicry#is a form of mimicry where a harmless species has evolved to imitate the warning signals of a harmful species directed at a predator of them both. For example, we should avoid the venom of the Texas Coral Snake while the Mexican Milk Snake and other types of snakes that look similar# are not as bad.

Beyond the things we already know, there are things we don't know we should know about. But once we're aware of them, we can learn those things because they're knowable. We can learn to tell the snakes apart, for example. Known known and known unknown are two instances of certainty.

There are also things we know we don't know, we've identified we don't know them and others we don't know we don't know. The diagram from the Project Management Institute# calls out the nature of risk — uncertainty creates the need for understanding risk.

You can't manage what you don't understand

Recently, I had a meeting with a group of executives who were looking to evaluate a number of approaches to deal with a situation that involved risk. They had created a brief that called both for preparation and optimization.

After some conversation I realized that they already had some kind of expectation of what the approach would need to look like. Yet, by their own admission, they did not have a full understanding that the brief and the expectation where not on the same page. There was also domain knowledge uncertainty.

Their attention was focused on short term tactics, yet the request was for a strategic long term approach. When the focus becomes not the topic but the expectation, the results is a disconnect. The hole (or more than one) in our attention filter leads us to confuse perception with reality.

In Rosling's definition, risk equals actual danger times our degree of exposure. It's very hard to evaluate something when we have a hole in our knowledge and don't know we do. Said another way, risk is the possibility of suffering loss or harm, not the loss itself.

When we learn to manage the sources of exposure to risk, including our own reactions (for example, fear) and experience with uncertain situations, we can begin to benefit from the opportunity brought about by change and creative problem solving.

To manage risk appropriately, we should remember that if the nature of an occurrence is certain, it is more like a fact or knowledge, If it's uncertain (probability of is less than 1, for example), the impact can be uncertain as well.

Evidence and data are useful in decision-making, they also keep us from stressing out and feeling helpless.

When your publication doesn't reach a critical mass on feedback, if you see no sharing from the active group, then it might be time to retire it gracefully. As is often the case, when not enough people activate the silent majority decides.

The truth is that I haven't put enough effort into awareness and distribution. There are no annoying but effective pop up subscription boxed on this site, the link is not at the bottom of every post, just a small space on the sidebar. But these may be cosmetic issues if I'm missing the mark on the substance.

In the old world, a single individual (yes, it's only me producing content for Conversation Agent, since many ask) could not produce, publish, and distribute easily. Today we can. It's great, and it means that we're in some form or another all competing with each other for attention.

All serious writers are also serious readers

It won't be a shock to you that I read about a dozen or more emails from different organizations per week — news about different industries and business stages, smart thinking in economics and the sciences, and lifestyle publications.

It's a very diverse selection for tone, styles, and subject matters. I go beyond the headlines to studying what makes a story compelling and what makes a format engaging and marketable. This week, I took a slightly closer look at Skift, and its understanding of the travel industry.

The Hustle is a daily note I started reading recently upon recommendations by a couple of founders. Like Quartz Obsession daily I don't always read it. The Skimm is another I skim daily. What interest me are the format, flow, language, editorial choices, and as much as possible the integration with web properties.

For example, I noted how each story on The Hustle has a mini landing page# where you can subscribe. Also, if you follow the link, you'll note how they blend media and marketing, with appropriate disclosure. They're experimenting to see where to introduce sponsors. The voice is interesting. It may not appeal to you, but it's designed to provide a fresh take on news. On that count it succeeds.

The Skimm doesn't appeal as tone and voice, but I like their references to deep dives. Quartz Obsessions is very conversational, with quizzes, polls, and many ways to provide feedback. The most read stories become the obsession interlude in the main daily news email by Quartz.

The best emails are a way for a community to stay up to date. Behind many of the most interesting writing in my inbox is a community passionate about staying in touch and learning together.

Marketing and media are blending

Email is the most direct communication medium we have to connect with a creator. Rather than interrupting a story with all kinds of moving banners, pop up windows and videos in auto play, it's the ultimate personal channel.

Beyond niche publications where analysis is the product, emails with any kind of scale continue to blend marketing and media.

The first wave of letters, like Smart Brief, curated industry news. Publications for young professionals that are sprouting up now repackage the news to be more conversational. Social media and text messages have changed the language we use to write. they've also changed our number of inboxes.

Technology adoption has increased mobility and the number of formats at anyone's disposal to communicate with others. This has had an impact on the type and variety of messages people read — in our phones, friends and family compete with The New York Times. Conversational makes more sense.

Where do digital publications fit?

Fast Company has a story about Mel#, a lifestyle publication for men. It's a not sponsored content play associated with Dollar Shave (a Uniliver company). The company already has a separate digital content program, says the article.

It takes its inspiration from the mature lifestyle magazines for women that tackle more personal topics and questions. Stuff men think about, but that is not specifically manly. Which is interesting. But kind of like my blog, without a monetization strategy. Likely not sustainable in the long run.

A hint of what's to come in the future for Mel may be the move away from Medium as the publishing platform. We'll probably see an evolution in the direction of shoppable content next. One thing I agree with Dollar Shave CEO Dubin, “It’s really hard to build a thriving content team.”

Eventually, even ventures sponsored by corporate entities (as this blog used to be sponsored by my day job) need to show some results to continue to exist.

Remember P&G's Man of the House? It also bet on men, but was focused too much on content and too little on community engagement. Community building is the magic ingredient that sustains many successful emails and sites. Content alone doesn't do enough heavy lifting to sustain a publication.

Wherever is your line between marketing and media or media and marketing, without community you may have no joy.

Brand is an interesting concept for many organizations, especially in the digital era. It's helpful to define what you do and to understand how clients and customers experience your product and service. In some cases, it can help a company reconnect with purpose, or define a new one.

Having a brand strategy helps move beyond existing as a product — many Software as a Service (SaaS) companies, but also professional service organizations start there — and building an actual business. The practice of positioning the value you offer helps define purpose for the team, your clients, and potential investors.

It's a critical exercise in discipline — defining what you stand for, who you serve, and what kind of value you deliver — that helps inform the story you tell. Everything else flows from there. A good story, well told is more sustainable over time.

Startups need a brand strategy to position in the minds of investors, the founding team, and clients. But it's not one and done exercise. When we start anything, we have a certain idea of how things should go. Then we meet reality and develop experience as we develop the product and service around it.

The most important process in building a company is that we grow, the team grows, and individuals within it. When we talk about growth, we conflate the two — product (and revenue) with personal and group growth. Part of the practice and experience of building a company goes to seeing the latter.

Product/market fit is important not just to startups, many mature brands and the organizations that support them often need to revisit the business they're in and re-align, if they hope to stay true to their story. Story impacts who you hire and serve, what you measure, and how you go to market.

Understand the business you're in

It can make a big difference to how you decide. Contrary to belief, it's not easier for startups than for organizations more set in their ways. What's at play is not so much loss aversion, but habits of thought, which depend on the story we tell.

A couple of years ago Skift was planning its growth to the next stage of development#. The company had a good story to tell — have your media, and your data insights with it — and knew the trigger words they needed to tell it. But the small wrinkle that it wasn't working so well with investors led to a realization — the organization was living a different story.

Co-founder Rafat Ali discovered that the product Skift had built was itself the product of an organization that had a different set of strengths at its core than what he was pitching to investors. Hence the decision to move forward as a media company with a mission to define the future of travel.

With that, the operating principle that governs Skift's story became three-part:

Doing less with more is the new doing more with less.

Going slow to go fast is the new scaling up.

Less is better, less is deep, less is slow & deliberate, less is human, and humane.

Using these points as the guiding framework, it became easier to align every decision to create a different kind of brand — one that doesn't chase scale for scale's sake, focused on what people know best to provide value in exchange for revenue, intent on building discipline about saying no to the wrong things, including the temptation of following the herd in the market.

The trade-off then became efficiency of effort, and making space to think better to act better. Quality of life creates quality of product and service, the two go hand-in-hand. As Rafat says:

There are two ways to think about creating a company culture. It’s either a set of perks and platitudes designed to make employees feel good about themselves for working somewhere — or it’s a strategic function that helps keep your employees aligned with your values, and your values aligned with your users.

Unless you make a conscious strategic decision to live a brand-relevant culture, you’ll inevitably default to the same generic lip service as a hundred other companies–and you’ll pay the price in everything from recruiting to retention to market leadership to customer service.

I like to talk about users in terms of the people who derive value from what you do. Many businesses who cater to other businesses often don't think or focus too much on the ultimate users of a product or service that originates from their work. They should. Today experience drives everything — it's client or customer to business.

Doing things that don't scale is the closest we get to being human. People respond to that, it's not just a good story. When you're in the passion business, it becomes easier to stay true to yourself. Forget what everyone else is saying about who you should be. Can't be all things to all people anyway.

When you stand for nothing, you fall for everything, I forgot who said this first. It resonates because it's true. Hard to find your purpose if you believe what everyone says and spend zero time finding what you're about. The truth is that many older organizations that once knew forgot, or changed with the market and missed the critical step of re-aligning products and services with value.

It's much easier to keep optimizing existing processes and telling the same story. There's a feeling of control, and the false security of managing risk this way. But the cost might be irrelevance or worse if the gap between the story you tell and the experience is tenuous enough.

Context changes, the market changes, clients move into new directions... all this movement, more rapid than in the past thanks to technology, is why many organizations talk about agile. To me, agility creates the context for exploring different areas of the business:

Mindset — how can colleagues and groups keep learning, and staying ahead of the tech / industry / practice curve? Who is ready? What evidence does the organization need to be ready?

Tools — what kind of tools facilitate continuous learning through action and feedback loops and how can we integrate them in the every day organizational habits?

Teams / People — what is the maturity level of groups based on evidence and how do we replicate the model? How can we create new teams that “ask for more,” who are inquisitive and curious, so that all strategies may grow? How can we create a new leadership that's open to unproven paths: seek out unknown ideas, and not to get tangled in overly-common case studies? What new insights can we bring to the table?

Operational — What is the value of better questions and righter answers to the organization?

Answering those questions is a good starting point for telling a new story. The best story creates value in the telling. Some companies find it easier to streamline their story over time as they improve product and service performance, and/or discover how it delivers value.

The hardest part of story is belief, which is why mindset comes first. A good story well told builds community around a business, and inside it. Because it feels honest, and real world evidence supports it (can't be just digital or academic.)

I like what the Skift story illustrates. The company operates in a very competitive market, and it identified its niche, the unique intersection of passion, skill, and experience where it alone can sit.

I love helping founders tell their story, mature organizations re-energize their brand(s), and connect companies with their communities. It's good work, it's important work.

“As practitioners, we have a responsibility to know what we are doing,” says Faris Yakob in a recent conversation# about strategy. There's a time for every purpose. But there isn't an infinite amount of time (or customers) we can burn through.

With digital media, building brands has become more approachable by many (see social media)... and more difficult. Because when we make the mistake of conflating short term, direct marketing-like ROI with what we should do to build for the mind- and long-er sustainability, we maximize for confusion.

Says Yacob:

Brands doing it well are the ones doing holistic comms planning, stimulating and capturing demand, and not confusing the two. Additionally, there is a large middle ground between immediate sales response and long term brand building that needs considering.

The market for building websites and banners might have gotten commoditized, see for example Carrd# and Fiverr#, but if you need help putting it all together in a way that is sustainable, and finding the actual value in what you offer, there's still a demand for skilled talent.

For example, how do you grow your audience, or authority, or identify the right product (and validate it) that is unique to you? Even better, how do you identify if the problem you have is awareness, or if it's value?

Everyone has been pivoting to customer experience in recent years. But it's hard to understand what it means. “Making things worth people's time is the job of everything,” but there are still distinctions in the continuum. What kind of need do you have? Are you already doing business together?

To me, the more productive space for consultants and agencies is product innovation (I've helped many professional organizations with service as a product), and business innovation (as in building capabilities.) Growth comes from doing what we do better, doing more of it, telling a better story, and becoming better at doing that.

So I did a bit of an experiment and integrated some of @Faris' comments about the distinction between brand experience and customer experience, as well as @JoePine's thoughts on separating time saved from time well spent (it's still an important conversation for social media/attention trade-offs.)

See the diagram above. It's adapted from the proven integrated marketing blueprint I've been using with clients for years.

Does it open new possibilities for you? What would you change?

Your brand is a proxy that helps ease choice overwhelm ― people spend zero time thinking about you and your content (or new campaign.) They do want to make their choices count. For some products and services we go for good enough. Think about it.

Which means the options are clear ― we either impress and reset the bar (mostly people do that, but luxury experiences also come to mind), or we're the easiest people to deal with and meet the competence requirement.

Making time an investment ― e.g., removing obstacles, building capabilities, creating exponential growth, delivering highly entertaining experiences that give joy... all these things have value. Then the question of how valuable becomes how close are you to the problem your specific clients face?

On the product side, saving time, or creating a new type of experience ― with trade-offs as appropriate ― works well. Take for example Southwest, easiest to buy, but no reserved seats (though you can pay extra to board early) and paid luggage. It redefined the airline category. Amazon redefined the commerce category.

A deeper understanding of client requirements is useful in both cases (remembering that we say one thing, and do another.) Word of mouth recommendations and positive reviews depend on your understanding of where you stand on value and whether you deliver on it consistently (including perception.)

“Our world hangs like a magnificent jewel in the vastness of space. Every one of us is a part of that jewel. A facet of that jewel. And in the perspective of infinity, our differences are infinitesimal. We are intimately related. May we never even pretend that we are not.”

This was part of Fred Rogers' commencement address at Dartmouth College in 2002. His message was simple — deep down we know that what matters in life is helping others win. That was his lifelong message. Later in the short talk, he repeats what he said during his lifetime achievement award in 1997#.

It takes a minute to think about the people who helped you — near and far in space and time — and thank them silently.

imagine how grateful they must be, that during your silent times, you remember how important they are to you.

It’s not the honors and the prizes, and the fancy outsides of life which ultimately nourish our souls.

It’s the knowing that we can be trusted. That we never have to fear the truth. That the bedrock of our lives, from which we make our choices, is very good stuff.

Clarity of language is the reason so many consider Rogers one of their first teachers. A special kind of teacher who related to children and adults across a screen. He made every effort to anticipate how what we said would come across. His aim was to relate.

There's a new documentary out on Rogers' work and life by Oscar winner Morgan Neville — “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” In the opening lines, we learn that it was his belief that “What we see and hear on the screen is part of who we become.”

For those who don't know about the show, Fred McFeely Rogers was an American television personality, musician, puppeteer, writer, producer, and Presbyterian minister. He created, hosted and composed the theme music for the educational preschool television series.

As The Atlantic reports#, Rogers was very good at putting himself in the minds of children watching. The writers of his show named his quest for accuracy and clarity Freddish. Arthur Greenwald and Barry Head, two writers on the show, came up with a short 9-step guide for translating into Freddish:

“State the idea you wish to express as clearly as possible, and in terms preschoolers can understand.” Example: It is dangerous to play in the street. ​​​​​​

“Rephrase in a positive manner,” as in It is good to play where it is safe.

“Rephrase the idea, bearing in mind that preschoolers cannot yet make subtle distinctions and need to be redirected to authorities they trust.” As in, “Ask your parents where it is safe to play.”

“Rephrase your idea to eliminate all elements that could be considered prescriptive, directive, or instructive.” In the example, that’d mean getting rid of “ask”: Your parents will tell you where it is safe to play.

“Rephrase any element that suggests certainty.” That’d be “will”: Your parents can tell you where it is safe to play.

“Rephrase your idea to eliminate any element that may not apply to all children.” Not all children know their parents, so: Your favorite grown-ups can tell you where it is safe to play.

“Add a simple motivational idea that gives preschoolers a reason to follow your advice.” Perhaps: Your favorite grown-ups can tell you where it is safe to play. It is good to listen to them.

“Rephrase your new statement, repeating the first step.” “Good” represents a value judgment, so: Your favorite grown-ups can tell you where it is safe to play. It is important to try to listen to them.

“Rephrase your idea a ﬁnal time, relating it to some phase of development a preschooler can understand.” Maybe: Your favorite grown-ups can tell you where it is safe to play. It is important to try to listen to them, and listening is an important part of growing.

The most minute details to the most important messages were put through this process. What Rogers wanted to say was put through the paces to figure out how to say it so it sounds right for children and the adults watching.

Rogers' portrayal of the kind-hearted, neighborly persona who nurtured connection to his audiences was as much a product of research (the emerging field of child-development) as deliberate choice.

“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler,” a quote attributed to Einstein, illustrates the principle of Occam’s razor. When faced with two answers to a problem, we should pick the one that makes the fewest assumptions.

Rogers took the time to learn about the people to whom he wanted to relate. He knew what he wanted to say. The guide is an example of the process he used to say it with clarity. The shows took children and adults on a journey, and each step of the journey provided a consistent experience.

The human tendency to generalize is also a double-edged sword for brands — when the experience with a company is poor, we tend to generalize across all of them. Which means all of our communications should deliver a consistent experience across the customer journey.

Mister Rogers did this well. He knew his shows could influence behavior, so he kept striving to make them better. He spoke in the language that was easiest to understand for his viewers.

Screens change culture. Social media has made it more conversational, too. We share visuals, sounds, and written words. Each form of communication changes what and how influences us.

The shifting forces in digital culture are creating serious constraints on brands — compression, disposability, curation, and self-promotion. But they're also opening potential opportunities for deepening, timelessness, creation, and self-reflection.

It's our choice — do we want to be healers or dealers? The healers (or platforms) are marketplaces that connect people, like Kickstarter, Etsy, AirBnB. The dealers (or aggregators) aim to harness attention to either sell ads, or leverage the data. They aim to build attention economies.

Our communications tell a story. When we put language or cultural barriers between groups and business units, we end up putting them in front of customers. The amount of care we put in identifying our bottlenecks, where things get lost in translation, shows customers we care.

A few questions to get you started in creating value for your brand messages:

Is it simple? Does the message come across clearly?

Is it culturally smart? Do the people you want to talk to understand it?

Does it talk the walk? In others words, can people identify your brand with it quickly?

We rarely have time and resources to do it all, or to know it all. When our choices come from a deep sense of who we are, we have a good start. “The greatest gift you ever give is your honest self,” says Rogers. Good communication delivers a consistent experience and earns trust.

“Love and trust, in the space between what’s said and what’s heard in our life, can make all the difference in the world.”

“Subtracting your dependence on some of the things you take for granted increases your independence.

It's liberating, forcing you to rely on your own ability rather than your customary crutches.”

[Twyla Tharp]

If there is a silver lining in the recent media focus on the Cambridge Analytica misgivings it's the attention the story has kept on data mining practices by social networks and the unmetered use by organizations to target people. Market researchers have been using the same techniques for years.

But there are things data cannot tell us.

Common practices

Susanne Yada, a Facebook ad strategist says, “It was pretty common knowledge among people who understood the internet that if you were taking a quiz to find out what kind of cheese you are, somebody on the other end is very interested in getting that data. I wish I could say I was more surprised and more alarmed. I just assumed that if you take a quiz, someone would know who you are because you are signed into Facebook.”#

A quiz or an assessment in the digital age is no longer just a novelty to attract attention, it's an entry-point for building a psychographic profile of participants. Do the ends of targeting ads justify the means? Harvesting data through questionable collection practices begs further questioning.

Psychographic is qualitative methodology used to describe consumers on psychological attributes. It has been applied to the study of personality, values, opinions, attitudes, interests, and lifestyles. Which means cataloguing people based on sexual orientation, political beliefs, relationship status, drug use, along with other personality traits.

Soshana Zuboff calls the us of data to spy on people and manipulate them surveillance capitalism. If people acknowledged the free services in exchange for data deal they made intellectually, before this conversation went mainstream in the public consciousness it was something not felt. Since we make most of our decisions based on emotion, feelings are important.

We're now discovering that there are between 2,500 and 4,000 data brokers only in the U.S.# Credit Bureaus collect data on people from disparate sources, cutting deals with businesses, the real customers, to get files and records on people.

In this sense, forgetting the smartphone home may become a cause for rejoicing in a bout of freedom from immediate recording eyes. In 2010, the Wall Street Journal published a series of articles on how organizations track people online and offline. What they Know won awards and was based on traditional reporting as well as detailed research by technologists.

Common issues

Breaches expose information the other way. They shine a light on the depth and breadth of data gathering practices — and on the business models that rely on them. Awareness changes the perception of knowledge and its use. Anyone not living under a rock now is aware that we likely don't know all the technical implications, but we know enough to start making different decisions on how we browse and communicate online.

Business models are the most problematic, because they create dependency on data and an incentive to collect as much as possible. Beyond advertising, lack of transparency on third party sharing and usage merit further scrutiny. Perhaps the time has come to evolve business practices — how platforms and people interact — and standards — based on laws and regulations.

Our culture is the sum of behaviors and practices. It's not carved in stone, it's dynamic. Change the rules of acceptable behaviors and the incentives and one can change the culture. W. Edwards Deming's “In God we trust; all others bring data” has become a mantra — and technology God-sent. But we're still catching up on the consequences of exponential growth.

Enter GDPR, which goes into effect on May 25, 2018. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a regulation by which the European Parliament, the Council of the European Union and the European Commission intended to strengthen and unify data protection for all individuals within the European Union (EU). It also addresses the export of personal data outside the EU.

don't transfer data outside the European Economic Area without adequate protection

each data point you collect needs to have a reason why (vs. using a catch-all collection form)

citizens have the right to an accurate portrayal of their personal data, a controller must vouch for accuracy and its updates

retain data only for its original use and length of time

keep data secure and report data breaches within 72 hours

Spring is a good time for housekeeping — opt-in forms, unsubscribe policies, but also records, cookie duration, security patches and so on. For example, MailChimp just went to single sing-in, but I kept my lists to double opt-in# for good measure.

Common knowledge

There are many things we can measure and collect data on. Without sufficient information and knowledge of context, we end up missing the mark, not to mention focusing solely on what we measure. Do we measure the right things? Do we take into account cause vs. consequence?

In qualitative data analysis we should look at interval frequency, representative sampling, removing skews and bias, and using appropriate modelling techniques. Hence the importance of questionnaire design, which is more art than science.

Data is not just numbers but interpretation. Most models are built on probabilities with assumptions. We can see a pattern and a problem, but may not inquired further or gotten enough reference points to know why. No follow through. Is the problem or opportunity real, or is it just perceived? How much of the problem is the organization's doing? This part is hard to tell just with data.

How would things change if we had more visibility into data? In the weeks following the outrage over a renewed awareness of Facebook's collection practices many may have made different decisions over their online activities. Better/more data is useful for so many decisions we make in life.

But it's information on why — motivation and intent — that gives us the necessary clues to make those decisions smart.

Uncommon insights

Critical thinking and a moral compass help us decrease our dependence on what we think we know and social pressure to conform. Y Combinator's Paul Graham's advice to founders is to do things that don't scale#. In a haste to scale, many businesses and individuals, make trade-offs that end up tying them to unsustainable models and questionable reputations.

Data can give us the facts, but it cannot tell us what they mean. People can say what they mean. Conversations can tell us a lot about what is happening, why we care, and give us input on opportunity. Communities and tribes give us the ability to go where everyone else isn't.

This is because:

They give us strength — strength is not just in numbers. It's in encouragement, acceptance, and generosity. They provide a very different experience than groupthink

They give us learning — performance in the long-term looks very different than optimization for the short term. They motivate us to try new things, and experiment

They give us questions — feedback is valuable, but questions provide better clues on what to explore further. They may help us ask better questions, too.

Data cannot tell us what we don't know. Best practices, what other people are doing can only be a starting point. We still need to figure out what works for us and why. That's a two-part conversation — decide what we're about and what we stand for, and dial in business practices to sync with expectations.

Expectations evolve based not just on what we do, but on what everyone else is doing. A community gives an organization the advantage of insight and is a differentiator that cannot be copied easily — people identify with collective goals of growth and learning. It's the caring and sharing that creates bonds and an experience worth having.

Data may show us a map, a simplified version to get us from point A to point B. But it's not the territory of opportunity for the business.

Shared on Twitter by former Pixar storyboard artist Emma Coats, the rules distill the story basics we of creating a good narrative. It's simple advice worth following given Pixar's impressive record. Its feature films have earned around $10.8 billion at box office worldwide, averaging $634 per film. The company received sixteen Academy Awards, seven Golden Globe Awards, and eleven Grammy Awards.

At Pixar, they know what it takes to bring something new to the world. When Brave was released many critics were skeptical—comparing it to past successes like The Incredibles or Ratatouille it didn't feel groundbreaking. Director Mark Andrews and producer Katherine Sarafian faced challenges in making the movie, which took seven years to make and was pitched by director Brenda Chapman who started the movie. According to Safian:

“It was not easy.The biggest challenges at Pixar are always the stories. We want really original stories that come from the hearts and minds of our filmmakers. We take years in crafting the story and improving it and changing it, throwing things out that aren’t working and adding things that do work. All of that is just the jumping off point for the technology and how we are going to make this happen.”

Andrews says the Pixar method saved the day:

“It’s great. It’s fun. I’ve worked in a lot of studios but this is the first one run by the artists. They understand the process is an organic and difficult process, one of trial and failure. That’s what we do. We’re trying to change lead into gold and every time we manage to change lead into gold we say to ourselves, ‘wow, how did we do that?’”

Finding the truth beyond the official story matters increasingly more. Truth connect with our emotional core. The 22 rules are based on experience, yet they ark back to the timeless patterns of storytelling. When we apply them appropriately to tell our story we connect:

1./ You admire a character for trying more than for their successes.

2./ You gotta keep in mind what’s interesting to you as an audience, not what’s fun to do as a writer. They can be v. different.

3./ Trying for theme is important, but you won’t see what the story is actually about til you’re at the end of it. Now rewrite.

4./ Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___.

6./ What is your character good at, comfortable with? Throw the polar opposite at them. Challenge them. How do they deal?

7./ Come up with your ending before you figure out your middle. Seriously. Endings are hard, get yours working up front.

8./ Finish your story, let go even if it’s not perfect. In an ideal world you have both, but move on. Do better next time.

9./ When you’re stuck, make a list of what WOULDN’T happen next. Lots of times the material to get you unstuck will show up.

10./ Pull apart the stories you like. What you like in them is a part of you; you’ve got to recognize it before you can use it.

11./ Putting it on paper lets you start fixing it. If it stays in your head, a perfect idea, you’ll never share it with anyone.

12./ Discount the 1st thing that comes to mind. And the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th – get the obvious out of the way. Surprise yourself.

13./ Give your characters opinions. Passive/malleable might seem likable to you as you write, but it’s poison to the audience.

14./ Why must you tell THIS story? What’s the belief burning within you that your story feeds off of? That’s the heart of it.

15./ If you were your character, in this situation, how would you feel? Honesty lends credibility to unbelievable situations.

16./ What are the stakes? Give us reason to root for the character. What happens if they don’t succeed? Stack the odds against.

17./ No work is ever wasted. If it’s not working, let go and move on - it’ll come back around to be useful later.

18./ You have to know yourself: the difference between doing your best & fussing. Story is testing, not refining.

19./ Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.

20./ Exercise: take the building blocks of a movie you dislike. How d’you rearrange them into what you DO like?

21./ You gotta identify with your situation/characters, can’t just write ‘cool’. What would make YOU act that way?

22./ What’s the essence of your story? Most economical telling of it? If you know that, you can build out from there.

Believing in the importance of telling a story and persisting through early challenges is also important. Steve Jobs saw and annotated some earlier drafts of Brave, which went on to win the Academy Award, the Golden Globe, and the BAFTA Award for Best Animated Feature Film.

Children are natural storytellers, but we all tell stories. As part of Pixar in a Box, which includes free courses on animation, colors in films and environment and character modeling, the studio is now offering a free course on the art of storytelling through the Khan Academy.

The inscription on Trajan's Column dates back to 113 A.D. The person who engraved these letters, the Senate and the People of Rome who dedicated them, and Trajan himself are long since dust. But the words remain.

This particular set of characters happens to be the basis of modern typography—an unintended consequence, but true. Typesetters have long considered Trajan's column to be the gold standard of Roman capital letters. Every printed word in a Western language owes a little something to this bit of Second Century political adulation.

Which goes to show the persistence and power of words—or, in this case, the mere form of words. This inscription was meant to immortalize a certain Marcus Ulpius Nerva Traianus for his victory in the otherwise-forgotten Dacian Wars.

Instead, it really came to immortalize an idea—one of classical beauty, of the delicate serifs and contrasting strokes which still support the alphabet you are now reading. It's a legacy far greater than quelling some upstart empire on the banks of the Danube.

In our twitterized world, it's easy to forget the value of words. “Less is more,” as communication gets stripped to its barest essentials. Syntax, elegance, and grammar—all gone, in the service of utilitarian economy. We get what we need, consume it, and throw it away. We're okay with the fact that what we put out there is consumed quickly and thrown away, even culture and information.

Even before the Internet, we started using tools that made our communication shorter and faster. Now we're at an interesting point where we tweet. We’ll get to a point where we’ve reached terminal velocity, maybe grunts.

But just because we're no longer chipping our thoughts into stone, we shouldn't assume their lack of permanence or effect.

Our most trivial online musings rarely escape the unblinking, restless gaze of Google and its seemingly limitless virtual libraries of digital storage. It would be fascinating to peer 19 centuries into the future, squinting like some bygone artisan under a hot Roman sun, to see what of our words remain for others.

Language has a strong effect on others. From the orators of ancient Rome to the more modern sermon givers, presenters, and speech writers, we have long prized the skill of selecting the right words, and timing them well to persuade us to do something. Certain words are better than others to get people to give— a study of 45,000 projects demonstrates which words work.